Immediate Family

About Mary Young Greeley

Like most married women of the period Mary Cheney Greeley, wife of the American newspaper editor Horace Greeley, was almost constantly pregnant. The marriage was not a happy one and her husband took every opportunity to avoid the severe company of his morose wife. It is possible that she had some variety of prepartum or postpartum depression.

She was a fanatical advocate of the Graham Diet and a follower of Spiritualism. One of her daughters died of neglect due to her doting on a sibling son. She believed her son was a spirit medium and constantly requested him to relay communications from the afterlife. After his death, she hired Margaret Fox to attempt to contact him. Little is known of her early life and her strange relationship with her husband coloured her later life.

She died in 1872. Horace Greeley, who at the time was running for President of the United States, died not long after.